Gun Safe in Kid's Room?

Defense experts' advise to create safe area met with derision

By: Mike Suchan, OutdoorChannel.com

A personal defense trainer is taking heat after he advised homeowners to place a gun safe in their child’s rooms.

Rob Pincus, gun safety advocate and firearms instructor, held a “Home Defense Concepts" seminar at the NRA Convention this past weekend in Houston. While he said admitted there are definite emotions behind it, a quick-access gun safe in a children’s bedroom makes sense to protect your family in the case of a home invasion.

“In the middle of the night, if I’m in the bathroom or getting a glass of water or I’m in the bedroom or watching TV in the living room, if that alarm goes off and the glass breaks and the dog starts barking, what’s the instinct that most people are going to have, in regard to, ‘am I going to run across the house to get the gun, or am I going to run over here to help the screaming kid?’ ” he said. “And if I’m going to go to the kid anyway, and I have an extra gun and an extra safe, why not put it in their closet?”

Sites like ThinkProgress and the Huffington Post condemned the notion, even tying it with the recent tragedy of a 5-year-old Kentucky boy who shot and killed his 2-year-old sister with a .22 rifle that was left in the corner of the residence unknowingly loaded.

Pincus, owner of I.C.E. Training, was adamant that a gun safe poses no harm if children of appropriate age are informed that they shouldn’t touch it and it’s a tool that could help save their life. He said if parents are worried their child will attempt to break into the safe, they have bigger issues than home security.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with staging a gun where you’re most likely to barricade,” he said. “If you have to run across the house to check on the kids, there’s no reason to take them out of that room and move them into some other room when a bad guy might be wandering around your house.

“If you’re all there together and you’re all safe, stay. If you have the gun in a holster, great. But if you know there’s a gun waiting for you there, you can get to your kids quicker. You can be evaded, barricaded and armed in that room.”

The MailOnline in England picked up the story, using “Outrage” in the headline. On Pincus’ Facebook page, he was lauded for “pissing off anti-gun libs on two continents.” He also made MSNBC.

TheBlaze.com backed Pincus’ advice as sound with the headline: “What piece of seemingly benign advice from an NRA speaker has liberal sites up in arms?”

Quick-access gun safes today are stronger, pry-proof and some can be opened only by a fingerprint scan.

“Why not one of these in the closet? … Out of sight, out of mind … but they should know it’s there. Just like they know there’s a gun staged in your room or theres’s a gun staged in kitchen or wherever it is. They know they don’t touch that one either. When they want to touch it, you’re going to take them to the range.”